Research: It is becoming increasingly clear that children do not spread infection

Whether or not children spread the coronavirus has been a controversial issue lately, in connection with the start of school. Some researchers have even demanded that children be provided with mouth guards, in order to prevent a feared explosive increase in the spread of infection.

But children are not spreaders. Finnish doctors state this after testing 11,000 children for corona in August. Of these, only five children - or the equivalent of 0.045 percent - were positive, according to the news agency SPT.

It was on Wednesday that Harri Saxén, chief physician at Helsinki University Hospital (HYY), informed about the corona condition. According to him, HYY has tested over 6,000 children aged 0–5 and over 5,000 children aged 5–10.

In the younger group, four corona cases were found, and in the older one only one. Among the children who were ten years or older, the number of cases was slightly higher.

According to Harri Saxén, at the beginning of the pandemic, it was expected that preschools would become something of a hotbed for the new corona virus. That did not happen. Instead, children have become infected in other ways.

- The infection almost always comes from adults. It is unlikely that the disease is contagious in kindergarten, says Harri Saxén.

Since each test costs 150 euros, equivalent to just under SEK 1,600, it is not economically justifiable to test children, Harri Saxén believes.

- This causes large costs. In August alone, we spent a couple of million (euros) on testing children, which is quite a lot considering that we have only found five cases, he says.